Archive for the ‘government 2.0’ category

Gov Goes Mobile: Take Homes from our workshop on how Open Government efforts can leverage mobile.

December 28th, 2009

GovCollab and Potomac Forum had a Gov Goes Mobile workshop on December 10, 2010 to help demystify using mobile to engage the public and internal audiences to more toward a more Open Government.  We had in one room, some of the top innovators in mobile in Government in the country. I would like to thank all of speakers expecially Michael Becker and David Asheim who traveled across the country to speak at our first Gov Goes Mobile Event.

Government Guest Speakers:

  • Dalroy Ward, Chief,  Information Serivces Branch,  Information Access Division (IAD), Office of Environmental Information, EPA
  • Jeremy Vanderlan Web Developer for AIDS.gov, HHS
  • Cari A. Wolfson, President, Focus on U! and  Social Media Strategist at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention

Industry Experts:

The first thing which was made clear by several speakers is that mobile is  not a device but a platform with at least 8 different media channels:

  • SMS Short Message Service or the common text message.
  • MMS Multi-Media Message Service for sending pictures and video.
  • Email
  • IVR Interactive Voice Response services which are becoming easier and cheaper to implment.
  • Content Channel.  Streaming video and audio.
  • Mobile Web. Small versions of websites which are more readable on a small screen.
  • Bluetooth. Not to be overlooked. This is starting to be used for customer tracking as well as within store interactions such as coupons.
  • Applications.  The App made famous by the I-Phone.

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Posted in Engagement, New Media, Outreach, Web 2.0, government 2.0

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Top 200 .Gov Websites: Thinking about Metrics and Performance Management for Open Government

December 7th, 2009

Top Government Websites by Visitors:

  • Top FederalWebsite:  ED.gov
  • Top State Website:  CA.gov
  • Top City Website:  NYC.gov

On the eve of the open government directive, I wanted to start thinking about to measure how well an agency does Open Government.  Afterall we are not working on Open Government to say we are doing it, but to serve the mission of a specific agency and the government as a whole.  A rough measure of service though very imperfect is how many people are visiting a website monthly.   At least you can do an ROI on the cost per visit and see whether the site is actually attacting visitors.   To start thinking about this, I did a survey of all the .Gov websites I could find and determine the number of visitors based on publically available visitors for the month of August which I could find for free (not claiming these stats are the best but they are a start).  Then I organized the list with the sites with the most visitors in one month at the top.

Not doing a full analysis now but some interesting observations: 8 Cities make it to the top 200. The top city is Nyc.gov with about 1.5 millions visitors in a month.  Dc.gov is #2 with about 300K per month.    The top state is California at 8.5 millions visitors in a month.   » Read more: Top 200 .Gov Websites: Thinking about Metrics and Performance Management for Open Government

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Posted in Building Better Government Websites, government 2.0

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Building Better Open Government Websites Recap: Accessibility and Social Media Panel

December 7th, 2009

On our October 30 workshop with Potomac Forum, we invited Terry Weaver, Director of the Center for Information Technology Accommodation (CITA), to be on a panel discussing 508 legislation compliance and Social Media. 5 significant points emerged from that discussion which will affect multiple agencies engaging in social media and open government initiatives:

  1. Youtube now offers captioning. Ms. Weaver made it a point to indicate that since it is now possible to caption videos on YouTube, an excuse for posting a uncaptioned video no longer exists. Federal agencies must caption videos wherever they are posted. Posting an uncaptioned video and directing screenreader users back to the agency site for the captioned version is not equal access. It is more like the separate text version of a website that some agencies used in the early days of Section 508 when they couldn’t comply with the standards on the main page. It is a “separate but equal” approach which provides an alternative means and a practice  she discouraged.
  2. If you are not 508 compliant, indicate that you are planning to be and how someone who wants the information but cannot access can request accommodation. Having a plan is the first stage of 508 compliance and making it clear that you are progressing toward compliance is an important step toward mitigating risk.
  3. There are limitations on some social media sites for 508 compliance. Facebook for instance has content which often cannot be read by screen readers. Therefore any information posted on facebook by a government agency should be available from a compliant webpage elsewhere.
  4. Blogs in Open Government: Images should be captioned with description. Non-captioned videos should not be allowed. It is fairly easy to make most blogs 508 compliant by making sure they can be read by screen readers and also to caption with a description in the ALT tag any images. It was recommended that video submissions by the public not be allowed in comments as most will not be captioned.
  5. In any use of a social media site for official agency business or open government efforts, be sure to check with your agency’s general counsel to be sure that you have all of the proper agreements in place. GSA has examples of the modified terms of service (TOS) agreements it has put in place on www.apps.gov. GSA encourages all agencies to create similar agreements.

Stay tuned for more workshops on building better

open Government websites.

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Posted in Social Media, government 2.0, online social networking

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